Pieces of the Puzzle

For 20 years, Burlington, Vermont, has been pursuing policies that
buck the growth-at-any-cost trend followed by so many other
medium-sized cities. The policies the city adopted in the early ‘80s
emphasize economic self-sufficiency, local ownership, fairness,
environmental protection, inclusiveness, and a strong nonprofit “third
sector.” Some would say such policies are a recipe for economic
decline. But Burlington has a string of success stories that show the
practical power of its vision.

Photo
courtesy of the Institute for Sustainable Communities

Will Raap, an
urban
planner by training, was one of Burlington's sustainable development
pioneers. In 1985 Raap moved his Gardener's Supply Company to an
unlikely location—the Intervale, an area that since the early 1900s had
been the town's dump. Its dominant feature was the McNeil power plant,
a wood burning plant that uses wood chips, sawdust, and urban wood
waste to generate 50 megawatts of electricity—nearly enough to power
the entire city.

It was the power plant that
attracted Raap. He hoped to use the plant's waste heat to warm his
buildings and greenhouse. The first step, however, was to clear the
land of junk and restore the soil of the valley, which had once been a
fertile floodplain. He established the Burlington Compost Program in
1987, using a combination of food and yard waste from local households
and a Ben and Jerry's ice cream plant. Once a potential farm site was
restored by the compost, he moved the mobile composting operation to
the next site. Eventually the operation became too large to move, at
which point it put down roots and compost became a Burlington export
within the region.

Meanwhile, all that fertile
land was being put to good use. The nonprofit Intervale Foundation,
which has since taken over the composting operation, manages about 300
acres in the Intervale as an organic farm incubator. Would-be farmers
get their starts using the Foundation's land, equipment, and technical
expertise. Once they become proficient, they buy their own farm land in
Vermont and make way for the next generation of farmers-in-training.
The graduates become part of a mutual support system, in which they
share marketing, knowledge, and farm equipment.

The
Intervale is now home to 14 farms, including four community-supported
agriculture (CSA) operations that supply food to 1,000 subscribing
families. All told, Intervale supplies about 6 percent of Burlington's
food supply—up from 0.1 percent when the Foundation started and well
along towards the goal of 10 percent.

Closing the loopThis
fall, the Intervale Foundation and the city of Burlington will break
ground on their most ambitious project to date: the Intervale Community
Food Enterprise Center. This $4-million project will combine a
21,000-square-foot greenhouse with a 20,000-square foot food production
facility to provide local entrepreneurs with an affordable,
state-of-the-art food growing and processing facility.

One
of the lead tenants will be Wind Harvest Brewery, an artisan brewery
that will make beer from locally grown hops and fruits, providing an
additional market for nearby farmers. Liquid wastes from the brewing
process will go to the compost project and to a living machine created
by John Todd's Ocean Arks International. The living machine is a
human-made ecosystem, a carefully balanced set of sixteen 500-gallon
tanks that create a biologically diverse food web that turns waste into
fish food and fish waste into people food.

Other
tenants of the center will include River Run Foods, which will make
ketchup, sauces, and jambalaya from local produce; a community kitchen
for nutrition education and fledgling entrepreneurs; and a winter CSA
project. The facility will use state-of-the-art green building
practices, and most of the heat requirements—even in Vermont's frigid
winters—will be met by using waste heat from the McNeil Generating
Station next door, just as Raap envisioned when he came to the
Intervale.

The Intervale story is just a part of
Burlington's success with sustainable development. In the early ‘80s,
Burlington adopted a set of policies that have guided its efforts over
the last 20 years. These policies emphasize economic self-sufficiency,
local ownership, fairness, environmental protection, inclusiveness, and
a strong third sector made up of nonprofit businesses and organizations
that work in concert with government.

Burlington has lots of other results to show for its sustainable development policies. Here are a few:

Groceries:When
the city's last downtown grocery closed several years ago, residents
realized that, as in many other communities, essential services were
leaving the city center for the suburbs. The city decided to lease a
city parking lot on attractive terms to a grocery store, through a
competitive bid process.

The local food co-op won
the bid, and opened its new 17,000-square-foot energy-efficient
facility a year ago. The store now serves 1,800 customers a day and has
met its sales projections from the day it opened. The co-op offers a
full range of natural, organic, and traditional supermarket items at
competitive prices, all with a bias toward locally grown food.

Housing and Land:With
a housing shortage and a community-wide aversion to suburban sprawl,
maintaining affordable housing is a challenge. The centerpiece of the
city's response is the Burlington Community Land Trust (BCLT), the
largest land trust in the country and the first to be created and
funded by a municipality. With over 250 units—mostly single-family
homes and condominiums—BCLT insulates affordable housing from market
forces and land speculation, assures access to land and housing for
low-income people, and preserves and improves neighborhoods.

BCLT
is also a major redeveloper of brownfields (blighted industrial and
commercial property) in the city's low-income neighborhoods,
transforming them into housing, nonprofit, and commercial space.

Banking:The
Burlington Ecumenical Action Ministry founded the Vermont Development
Credit Union in 1990. The member-owned cooperative, which serves
low-income and other underserved populations, is now self-sustaining.
In the 10 years since it was founded, the credit union has provided
banking services to 6,600 low-income Vermonters, made 4,900 loans with
less than a 1 percent default rate, made available $35 million in
capital, and provided financing for 250 new homeowners.

Power:In
the late 1980s, Burlington's municipally owned power company faced a
tough choice: should it buy power from a controversial hydropower
project in Quebec or take that same money and invest it in energy
conservation? Burlington chose the latter. In 1990, the city authorized
an $11.3 million bond to fund the energy-saving program. The result:
nearly 15,000 individual energy-efficiency installations, saving
customers $4.3 million annually on their electric bills. The majority
of the work was done by local contractors, resulting in job growth and
reinvestment in the local economy.

Democracy: In
the early 1980s, then Mayor (now US Representative) Bernie Saunders,
established seven Neighborhood Planning Assemblies to give citizens a
vehicle for solving neighborhood problems, allocating funds for
neighborhood projects, and choosing citizens to represent their
neighborhoods on a variety of task forces and advisory boards. Since
then, they've provided a platform for such citizen-led neighborhood
improvement projects as clean-up days, home and business improvement
awards, and tree plantings. They've also incubated new leadership in
the city.

The Future:In 1992, Burlington
purchased a 45-acre parcel of prime undeveloped land located along the
shore of Lake Champlain and created a Waterfront Urban Reserve.
According to the city's urban renewal plan, this will “reserve the
right for future generations to determine what level of development
should occur at this site.” For now, the reserve is open to the public
for walking, fishing, biking, quiet contemplation, and periodic art
events.

These are just a handful of the lessons from Burlington. Check out the Burlington Legacy Project (http://www.cedo.ci.burlington.vt.us/legacy) to learn more about what is arguably America's most sustainable community.

.Jill Bamburg is a consultant in the area of business and the environment and a frequent contributor to YES!